San Diego writers explore love, economics, the supernatural and the 2003 Cedar fire

T. Greenwood’s “Bodies of Water” is a wrenching look at what happens when two people fall in love in the wrong place at the wrong time. (Kensington Books, 384 pages, $15)

The place is rural Massachusetts, the time is the summer of 1960. From all outward appearances, Billie Valentine and her husband, Frankie, have a comfortable life with their two adopted daughters. Then some new neighbors, Ted and Eva, arrive on a hot July day and an unexpected affair blooms.

Society is emerging from the Eisenhower years on the cusp of change — more and more housewives wondering, “Is this all there is?” — but the kind of romance featured here is still very much taboo. The participants know it, and much of the book’s power comes from their feverish need to be together and their anguished understanding of the consequences if they are found out.

Beauty and tragedy at the same time, darkness then light — those are Greenwood hallmarks. The author now of seven novels, she’s terrific with characters, with the multiple textures that make someone seem human on the page. She has some interesting things to say here about memory, and the ending is as moving as anything she’s written.

Sandra Millers Younger was among the thousands in San Diego County who lost their homes to the catastrophic Cedar fire in 2003. She and her husband, Bob, barely had time to grab the dogs, some photos and a few other items as the flames roared down Wildcat Canyon, killing 12 neighbors.

Even though a decade has passed, she captures the terror and loss with vivid strokes in “The Fire Outside My Window,” a book that’s equal parts memoir and nonfiction narrative (Globe Pequot Press, 256 pages, $19.90). It’s a tricky line to walk between participant and reporter, but she does it well.

She’s especially good telling the sad stories of those who died in the fire (and its evil twin, the Paradise fire near Valley Center) and in detailing what the firefighters did and didn’t do right in battling what would become the largest wildfire in state history.

A signal fire by a lost hunter is what touched off the conflagration. Younger goes as a reporter to see him answer for his mistake in court. She also goes as one of his victims (although she disdains that word) and has to decide whether to forgive him. Powerful stuff.

Economics, famously ridiculed as “the dismal science,” is anything but in the hands of Uri Gneezy, a UC San Diego professor, and his co-author, John List. Their book “The Why Axis” is a frequently fascinating look at what motivates human behavior (PublicAffairs, 288 pages, $26.99).

Pioneers among economists who think field research is better than ivory-tower musing, they go to factories, schools and playgrounds to address such issues as the pay disparity between men and women, racial discrimination and youth violence.

Some of their findings upend long-held assumptions about the best incentives to use in closing the educational gap between rich kids and poor ones, for example, and in getting people to make charitable donations.